Australian IT leaders plan to hike data centre spend

Nearly 60% of Australian data centre decision-makers plan to increase their data centre budgets by 5-10% in the next year, according to a new survey.

The survey, conducted by Forrester Consulting for Digital Realty Trust, shows that big data-related technology investments are driving spending decisions.

For respondents across the four countries included in the survey - Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan - virtualisation and big data were the top factors behind the expected data capacity growth. Business growth, business continuity and storage growth were also key drivers.

“IT transformation projects such as virtualisation and big data are viewed as the main factors driving robust development across the data centre sector,” Digital Realty Regional Head for APAC Kris Kumar said. “We feel this demonstrates the maturing aspect of these organisations in relation to their data centre plans and budgets.”

Around half of respondents in the four countries - and 60% in Australia and Singapore - expect to increase their data centre budgets by 5-10% over the next 12 months. An additional 11% across all four markets plan to increase their budgets by more than 10%.

The majority (60%) of data centre decision-makers in the markets plan some kind of capacity expansion within the next four years. The most popular sourcing models are outsourcing (40%) and colocation (31%).

The survey indicates that the most important considerations when making decisions about new APAC data centre investments are location and resiliency. The facility’s network connectivity options and carrier availability are also among the factors most likely to influence the investment decisions.

Image courtesy of Bob Mical under CC